The Distillation

The study referenced material dating back as far as the 1950’s and accumulates six major psychedelic studies done in the 20th century. It found that, of the 536 participants, throughout all the studies, 59 percent of them showed “reliable improvements” in their drinking up to six months after testing. This, compared to a 38 percent success rate among those who did not use LSD ... One plant, called iboga, is known to go even farther, almost completely eradicated addictive urges in the individual after a multi-day cleanse on the substance.

In addition to this, studies have come in showing the value of ketamine and ayahuasca, with the former helping 66 percent of those trying it to kick alcohol. This, as opposed to the 24 percent success rate of those using non-psychedelic means ... As marijuana continues to be legalized and people continue to wake up to the value of so many plant-based (and even synthetic) chemicals, we continue to advance and explore our knowledge of them as medicines. So much is still to be learned, but one theory is that the psychedelic medicine increases synaptic plasticity in the brain, meaning that it makes brain connections easier to be reshaped. Let’s people break from their formerly, rigid thought.​From the Article: Largest Study ever shows the Consistent Value of Psychedelics as a way to Break AddictionPublished by: Healthnut NewsOriginal Link :https://www.healthnutnews.com/largest-study-ever-shows-consistent-value-psychedelics-way-break-addiction/Artwork Fair Use:By http://rebcenter-moscow.ru/ (English: own work Rebcenter-moscow) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

One of the first things Petitpas Taylor did after being sworn in was to visit a supervised drug injection site in B.C.

The day the Public Health Agency of Canada released its latest fatality statistics, the minister stopped by the Shepherds of Good Hope in Ottawa, a homeless shelter with a program designed to help people with addictions. The person who runs the shelter, Deirdre Freitheit, told the minister what the facility needs most is for the federal government to approve their application for a supervised drug injection site — it's currently being reviewed by Health Canada.

In the Philippines, tens of thousands of protesters rallied in cities across the country Thursday [September 21, 2017), warning that President Rodrigo Duterte was on the brink of imposing a dictatorship. ​"This is the biggest rally so far of the youth and people, and the rallies are bound to get bigger. And the Duterte government is bound to get more isolated and more exposed amongst the people, and soon will be ousted."

One thing you probably don’t think of... [psychedelics] as is an anti-inflammatory medicine. Like aspirin or ibuprofen ... It turns out, there may be reason to.​The data is unequivocal if you’re a mouse, because the studies have already been conducted. And Dr. Charles Nichols is working on extending this research into humans. But given that over 50-60% of people will suffer chronic inflammation as a disease mechanism at some point in their life, a potential therapy is extremely valuable. And — better late than never — science is now actively seeking answers in this new area, with funding coming in from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) as well as private disease foundations ... Researchers into psychedelics have frequently been hampered by the War on Drugs, a cultural wet blanket with influence that extends to the IRBs (Institutional Review Boards) that approve or disapprove the proposals made by would-be scientific investigators ... Dr. Nichols seems to be side-stepping psychedelics’ negative stigma quite effectively, though (something his father, Dr. David Nichols has done also). In part, this is because studies into the anti-inflammatory potential of psychedelics has nothing to do with their “metaphysical” or psychological aspects. Inflammation, it seems, can be fought at dose ranges so low that no psychedelic effects can be noticed.

Don’t go thinking that ecstasy bought on the streets is good for you though, laboratory studies have shown that only pure MDMA has been proven sufficiently safe for human consumption when taken a limited number of times in moderate doses.​After extensive research, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has now confirmed it’s planning to launch Phase 3 clinical trials, using MDMA to treat PTSD sufferers, and may eventually make ecstasy an approved prescription medication. Phase 3 will involve 200-400 subjects from all sorts of causes across the U.S., Canada, and a lot of different countries. Phase 3 starts around 2017, and it will take four to five years to finish. So that will put it at early 2021 for FDA approval.

The FDA says that federal law and internal regulations prohibit the agency from commenting on studies about pending applications or drugs still in development ... More than 100 patients have been treated in a series of trials in the U.S., Switzerland and Israel. In the largest to be published, more than 80 percent of participants were significantly better at their long-term follow-up – as many as six years after the last treatment ​In nearly a decade trying to recover from post-traumatic stress disorder caused by childhood abuse, Jessi Appleton compiled a medical chart that reads like a Chinese restaurant menu. Biofeedback. Neurofeedback. Anti-depressants. Anti-anxiety medication. She tried a popular treatment called Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), where she spent hours letting her gaze follow a therapist’s hand as it moved through carefully prescribed patterns. She tried another gaze-based therapy, called brainspotting. Ot’alora says her role is mostly supportive. Echoing Appleton’s description, she says the drug seems to help patients let go of their inner critic, or inner demons. “That part of you becomes a witness, saying, ‘This is what’s happening to you, this is what happened to you and this is how it felt.’ It’s very matter of fact.”​From the Article: Using Ecstasy to treat PTSD: ‘I felt like my soul snapped back into placePublished by: PBSOriginal Link :http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/using-ecstasy-treat-ptsd-felt-like-soul-snapped-back-place/Artwork Fair Use:By Anandjrao [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons

"I wrote a whole book called Bad Mother [which was published in May 2009]. If I had been micro-dosing back then, I probably would have written Remarkably Calm, Compassionate Mother." - Ayelet Waldman (author of A Really Good Day: How Microdosing Made a Mega Difference in My Mood, My Marriage, and My Life published in 2017)​Karen Smith has a lot on her mind. The 32-year-old lives in Chicago, where, after working for tech startups abroad for 10 years, she moved last year with her husband to attend a graduate program in data science. On top of her academic studies, Smith works 10 to 30 hours a week as the data guru for a consulting firm. What was really bringing her [Smith] down was the bleak Midwest winters. That, and she'd recently cut out her daily habit of cigarettes and marijuana, frustrated that she'd become so dependent on pot to manage her mood. She needed something to take the edge off. Smith—whose husband was also feeling low and looking for relief—had an idea, something she'd run across on Reddit. After some research, her husband bought psilocybin (psychedelic) mushrooms from a friend, ground them up with a Cuisinart spice grinder, and separated them into gel capsules ordered from Amazon. The dosage was precisely measured and precisely tiny: 10 micrograms for Smith's husband and about half of that for her, which is just below the threshold of what would normally make a user "trip." She took the homemade pill with a glass of water and waited. A few days later, she swallowed another one.

Recently, I have been living among the Siona and have seen how they are able to resist and contest, relying on collective yagé encounters, the plans of an multinational oil company that intended to pursue oil exploration in their territories. As we shall show here, the ability to “see” and “heal” associated with yagé is not only used to help individuals, but also to benefit groups, organizations, and territories.​As the Siona people told me, the taitas master the art of cooking and drinking yagé, usually called “the remedy,” in order to “see and do things with space.” Through yagé, taitas can “open and study space,” “clean it” or “harmonize it” and, if necessary, “close it” to someone. Taitas “open the space” to their apprentices, so they can “see.” Spirits of dead shamans can “close the space” to the living, and then they see nothing when they ingest the remedy. A living taita can “close the space” to another taita. They also “study the space,” and operate over it, when they drink the remedy to see the illness of a sick person, or the conditions for a project with an NGO or a state agency, or when there is private business between the taita or the taita´s relatives and others, and in a wide range of other situations ... Members of different communities, guided by different groups of taitas, “analyzed” the subject and “studied the space.” And the space, in fact, was full of conflicts; the strategy of the company was to divide the different organizations and leaders, offering a little money here and there, to separately compel the leaders to quickly approve the intervention on their respective territories. At the beginning of the consulta, company agents gladly financed the tomas, boasting of respecting the Indian custom, hoping to win the favor of young and old leaders. But, as the months passed and the Indians demanded more time and more resources to hold their meetings, the company’s agents became skeptical and declared that their chiefs in the big city did not understand why it was necessary to take so much remedy. Then, they threatened to disengage from the communities, and to seek the oil just outside the Indians lands.

ECfES

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